


son rêve d’opaline

by stonecarved (figure8)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26461510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/pseuds/stonecarved
Summary: He does not think of the Revolution as he watches Nile step out of her bathrobe.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 50
Kudos: 491





	son rêve d’opaline

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in twenty minutes in a state of total sleep deprivation and then immediately yeeted it here, so it uhhh is what it is. The responsibility falls entirely on this one interview of Matthias Schoenaerts where he’s in BED, for SOME REASON??? 
> 
> Set in a nebulous future after Booker has re-integrated the team and after a _long_ period of mutual pining. Their relationship is very fresh, their feelings on the other hand have aged like fine wine. 
> 
> Title and epigraph from _Je l’aime à mourir_ by Francis Cabrel, _the_ Book of Nile anthem in my humble and honest opinion. 
> 
> There are some oblique references to... unpleasant events in Booker’s past in this fic, mostly having to do with growing up poor and losing people. If you think something should be tagged, please don’t hesitate to tell me.

_ Moi je n’étais rien et voilà qu’aujourd'hui _

_ Je suis le gardien du sommeil de ses nuits, je l’aime à mourir _

_ Vous pouvez détruire tout ce qu’il vous plaira _

_ Elle n’aura qu’à ouvrir l’espace de ses bras pour tout reconstruire, je l’aime à mourir _

[Me, I was nothing

And now I find myself the keeper of her nights, I love her to death

You can destroy the world if you’d like

She would only need to open her arms wide

To rebuild everything, I love her to death]

— Francis Cabrel

  
  
  
  


He watches her get ready from the bed, still half-asleep, the edges of his vision blurry for the first few seconds until he blinks and she snaps into focus. Takes the vision in fragmented— the slope of her shoulder where her white robe is slipping off, the back of her neck revealed slowly as she pins up her hair, the glint of the pearl earrings she puts on, the quick flash of her reflection in the vanity mirror when the sun filters in through the semi-opened shutter blinds and hits the glass. He wants to put his mouth to every parcel of exposed skin, wants it with a fervor that does not surprise him anymore but still  _ overwhelms _ him; a gravitational pull so strong it could shift the earth on its axis. In a way he believes it has— the world stopped spinning for him when she entered his life, rearranged itself and then started turning again in an entirely new direction. It sounds dramatic, maybe. Sounds like something he would have teased Joe for even as recently as fifty years ago. He thinks he gets it now. He thinks he gets it and he feels so foolish, so unbelievably  _ stupid.  _ He would burn down the universe to keep her safe. He would do terrible things to keep her  _ close,  _ to not be parted from her. But she wouldn’t want him to, and that is the one paradoxical path he is going to walk for the rest of his damned,  _ blessed _ long life. 

He understands Nicky too, in that way. Sometimes he wonders if he always got slightly better along with Joe because Nicolò and him are too alike. There is a violence inside them both they have had to learn to control. A hunger tinted with rage, the kind born out of unfairness and  _ envy.  _ When he closes his eyes he can still picture his parents’ house in Vitrolles. His parents’  _ faces  _ have faded, but he still sees the shores of the Étang de Berre with the clarity of a day-old memory, even if he hasn’t been back in almost two centuries. He remembers the cold wind in the winter, stinging and sharp like pottery shards on his exposed face. He remembers the hollow, gnawing pain at the pit of his stomach.  _ Lack  _ is his oldest friend. He remembers the year that took his father and his oldest brother in rapid succession and left him with more grief than his body could fit between its bones and the responsibility of head of the household at barely sixteen. He could have been a gentler man, he thinks, in a world less ugly. When they speak of war he proudly recalls the one he walked away from as his first one, but that is not quite true. He killed for the first time two decades before that, in the name of freedom from tyranny. He does not feel French often, but sometimes when they are all watching football and the Marseillaise begins to play his stomach ties itself in knots and the corners of his eyes sting. 

He does not think of the Revolution as he watches Nile step out of her bathrobe. She folds it neatly over the back of her chair, smiles quietly to herself. She’s humming under her breath the way she does when she’s alone, as if to keep herself company. She must think he is still sleeping. He’s tempted to let her believe that. Sometimes it feels like there would not be enough time in the world to look at her even if they never died. 

Their gazes meet in the mirror. 

“You’re staring,” she grins. Barely a year ago he would have flushed the richest crimson, embarrassment marrow-deep.

“I am,” he answers. It comes out a little hoarse, his voice unused. She crosses the distance between the dressing table and the bed to come sit at the edge of the mattress, and his fingertips _ itch.  _ Is this how it will always be? How will he ever get stuff done? He finds himself with a newfound appreciation for Joe and Nicky’s staggering lack of public displays of affection. He does not think he has that kind of discipline in him. 

“I can hear you thinking,” she says. He rises up on his elbows. 

“Mmh? What am I thinking, then, Miss Freeman?” 

This pulls a short laugh from her lips. She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.” 

“Come closer,” he pleads. It really is pleading, even if his tone is satisfyingly even. She leans in,  _ finally  _ within reach. Like that he only has to push himself further up to kiss the swell of her bicep, steal a giggle. She’s wearing fancy underwear, a matching blue lace set that contrasts brightly with her skin, which she almost never does. The bra has wires, which he knows she hates, and so he guesses she has this on purely for aesthetic reasons. He tests his theory by nipping at the strap playfully with his teeth.

“Book,” she chastises him, but it’s clearly half-hearted. “I thought we could do brunch.” 

“I’m not hungry,” he says against her shoulder. 

“Then why are you eating my bra?” 

“I’m not hungry for food,” he amends, which earns him a tap on the head. 

“That was terrible,” she shakes her head, but she also pushes him back flat onto the bed with a palm on his chest, so he considers it a win, actually. 

He’s been half hard since he emerged from slumber, but it was a subterranean sensation, nothing urgent. She straddles him and suddenly he is  _ much  _ more aware of his own body, of the tug of desire low in his gut. When she bends down to join their mouths, the sigh he lets out is pure relief. His hands find her hips immediately, already a habit. He loves her so much he thinks he might choke on it. 

“Hey,” he whispers when they break apart for air. 

“You are so cheesy,” she says fondly. He presses a wet kiss to the side of her neck and she shivers, twists in his arms and laughs. Lower, where the small golden cross she never takes off rests between her collarbones, he sucks a bruise that lasts a fraction of seconds, and this time when she shakes it is with clear want. “Seb,” she says. It sounds a little fractured already. He slides his hands up her sides.  _ “Seb,”  _ she says again when he thumbs her hardening nipples over the lace, a simple caress. She’s so sensitive there, he has discovered. He replaces his fingers with his mouth and she thrashes against him, moans softly. The motion makes her roll her hips against his, has her sitting fully on his lap, and all the blood in his brain rushes suddenly downwards. 

She gives as good as she gets, sets her teeth at the juncture where Sébastien’s neck meets his shoulder and leaves her mark there, then soothes the sting with her tongue. It is his turn to emit a broken sound when she slithers a hand between their bodies to palm him through his boxer briefs. He bucks up into her touch, craving. He cannot decide what he wants. He could come like this, like a teenager who’s never had someone else’s hand on him, if she keeps it up. But he wants to get his mouth on her, so much it’s making him a little dizzy. 

“Nile,” he pants. “Baby, let me take care of you.” 

She grabs his face and kisses him  _ deeply,  _ open-mouthed and wet. 

“You and your euphemisms.” 

“No,” he says, and lifts her off him to swap their places, turns them around so that he’s the one looming over her. “No, I mean it.” 

She  _ blushes _ at that. He swipes his thumb under her eye, following the curve of her cheekbone where her skin has darkened. 

“Let me,” he says again. He kisses his way down her body in a straight line, from the hollow of her throat to her navel. Drinks in the small sounds that escape her, savors them on his tongue like nectar as he scrapes his stubble over sensitive skin and marvels at the miracle of her healing. She is so beautiful. Warm, warm and solid and alive and  _ his.  _ He cannot vocalize it just yet. He does not want to scare her off but he knows it. Has known it since the very first  _ minute,  _ if he’s honest with himself. Has known it since he woke up gasping with the taste of her blood in his mouth, grasping at his own unmarred throat. 

_ You were destined for me,  _ he wants to say but doesn’t. Even kept within the confines of his mind it tastes selfish against the roof of his mouth. It tastes sacrilegious. He doesn’t dare. What if he’s wrong? He doesn’t think he can be, not when he  _ feels it  _ so deep it might as well be the essence of his being, the plasma in his veins, but  _ what if he’s wrong?  _

“Booker,” she says, his nickname curved like a question, and he realizes he lost himself in his own panic. She ghosts two fingers over the bridge of his nose. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. 

She frowns, pushes herself up to a seated position and hooks her fingers under his chin to force him to look her in the eye. “No, that’s not something you have to apologize for.” 

“I want you,” he says. 

“I know that,” she huffs. “I think we have demonstrated amply that that is not the problem.” 

He recoils a little at the word. “There is no problem.” 

She slides her hand up, cups his jaw tenderly. “No?” 

He takes a second to think about it. “No,” he confirms. “Can I go back to eating you out now?” 

He sees the flicker of hesitation in her gaze, loves her fiercely for it. Loves her for the way she grins  _ You haven’t started,  _ too. 

He settles between her legs and shows her, the best he can. With careful hands on the inside of her thighs he says  _ You’re the best thing I ever touched.  _ With his tongue flat against the most intimate part of her he writes her free verse poetry about forever. She is an attentive, enthusiastic listener. When she comes her voice breaks on his name, and she claws at his shoulder in the most satisfying way. He wishes the scratches would remain. 

“Come here,” she demands when he emerges from between her legs. “Come here,” almost a whine. She sounds breathless. 

He thinks she is going to kiss him, but instead she just grabs him by the jaw, fingers digging into tender flesh, and asks him to fuck her. By that point he’s so turned on he could come if she breathed on his cock, and he has to recenter himself, eyes closed, her hand in his hair now. 

When he sinks inside her she gasps quietly, a small  _ oh  _ punched out of her. He seeks her hand blindly and she meets him halfway, interlinks their fingers. His other hand settles on her hip, grip not quite proprietary but  _ there,  _ enough to guide her back onto him with every thrust.  _ Her  _ other hand shoots for the headboard, and she pushes back to meet him. She hooks a leg over his waist to bring him closer, closer. She’s  _ tight hot wet  _ around him and he wants to last, wants to make this good for her, but already the coil in his belly is tightening. 

“Nile,” he says. He says it like a full sentence. Her eyes are dark and shimmering when they meet his, and he thinks she understands. 

“Me too,” she says. “Me too.” 

They’re right to call it  _ la petite mort,  _ he thinks deliriously as the final wave of pleasure crashes over him. Every time he’s died all he remembers is the brightest light, and for a furtive instant, a peace so complete he used to long for it in his every waking moment. 

_ Oh,  _ he thinks. In that moment he is the man who holds all the secrets of the universe in his cupped palms. She cries out and arches into him, two perfect lines colliding.  _ Oh, so this is how it’s supposed to be.  _

The brightest light, and peace. And peace. 

**Author's Note:**

> Writing a pairing for the first time is always a liiitle bit nerve wracking. I would love to hear your thoughts! Kudos and comments keep the author brain well fed ❤️  
> I am on [twitter](http://twitter.com/junmotions) and [tumblr](http://lgbtmazight.tumblr.com), if you're so inclined. See you soon!


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